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Revulsion, La Grande Bouffe, and the Spectacle of Grotesque Elite Self and System Destruction

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I’ve been having trouble being motivated to post of late. It’s not writer’s block; I’ve never been subject to that. Nor is it a want of topics. I just tossed a post idea, shredding a Financial Times exercise in propaganda masquerading as a “Big Read” on the Ukraine war, to another writer, who quickly took it up. Similarly, there is so much wrong about the recently-published National Security Strategy that it has elicited a boatload of commentary, with only a limited amount of overlap in critiques.1 Or how about the ridiculous Trump/Bessent idea that a pep talk from them will get consumers to ignore the budget stresses they feel every day?

But I realized that the root of my resistance to writing was a deeper emotional reaction: revulsion. Revulsion at the wanton destructiveness of our soi-disant betters, who are smashing lives and institutions and countries out of entitlement, hubris, laziness, and incompetence. I grew up at the tail end of the era where most communities were led in large measure by local elites, WASP-y men who resisted letting others into their clubs. But nevertheless, they generally accepted the idea of noblesse oblige: that they needed to keep up appearances of legitimacy, which meant taking some interest in the welfare of the societies in which they lived, and looking like they deserved the mantle of leadership (as in no visible cheating on cards or in their business/personal affairs).

Many in the crosshairs of today’s grossly derelict leadership don’t have luxury of having disgust as their strongest emotional response. They often report fear, anger, and despair at everything from the loss of jobs to essential benefits like healthcare and medication to threats to personal safety from ICE raids to in the UK incarceration for support for Palestine, or a gnawing sense of impending doom on many fronts, from climate change to AI eating all the jawbs to Social Security and other nations’ pension systems being on the chopping block. And for those who have felt revulsion, above all at the genocide in Gaza, there have been some outlets for action even if they have so far had limited effect, namely protests and supporting BDS.

But what is disturbing is the underlying, pervasive nihilism in the reckless disregard for the well-being of populations and institutions. Trump’s National Security screed prattles on about ushering in a golden age (for him, perhaps) and seeing “to remain the world’s most scientifically and technologically advanced and innovative country” after launching an ideological war on universities, slashing science funding, and actively driving out foreign students and academics. This isn’t eating America’s seed corn; it’s setting a bonfire to it. You can’t blame this level of stupidity on late-stage capitalism; it’s breaking things because he and his lot can and think they will show the former guard a thing or two. Yes they are, but not in the way they tell themselves. If things were working out all that well for the elites, would they need as many panic rooms? Bunkers in far-away places? And let us not forget that highly unequal societies impose a lifespan cost even on those at the top.

On the other side of the pond, leaders like Keir Starmer and Freidrich Merz are wrecking their social orders by doubling down on militarization and de-industrialization rather than renounce their deep personal commitments to Project Ukraine. President Johnson had the decency not to seek a second term when he realized voters had turned against him over his support for the war in Vietnam. They could even have ju-jitsued Trump by not only following his lead in trying to end the Ukraine conflict but going one further: “If we are going to normalize relations with Russia, why do we need to spend 5% of our GDPs on defense? Wouldn’t 2% to 3% suffice?” Instead, we are subjected to Ursula von der Leyen defying not just Euroclear and the Belgian government, but also the ECB and the IMF in trying to grab frozen Russian assets….which would only enable a limited prolongation of the war yet would severely damage Europe’s status as a safe place to do business and likely the value of the euro.

I suspect those who have had similar reactions to mine have different triggers. For instance, the interviewees on Judge Napolitano skew to those with military and intel experience. Many seemed to recoil at the Hegseth-Trump trying to evoke the movie Patton in speeches both gave at Quantico to an unprecedented assemblage of generals and flag officers, where the purpose seemed to be to rant about DEI and niceties like observing modern norms and rules for conducting war. That reaction in that cohort seems to have intensified over the Administration blowing up boats of Venezuelan fisherman to compensate for its impotence in assassinating or otherwise removing President Maduro. For instance:

Now to La Grande Bouffe, a 1973 film which achieved its aim of being utterly revolting. It shows four well-off men who decided to kill themselves by overeating and how they went about it.2 I must confess to never having seen the film3 but reviews give an idea of how gross the movie was (the trailer opts for being wry). First from Wikipedia:

The film tells the story of four friends who gather in a villa for the weekend, with the express purpose of eating themselves to death..

The first protagonist is Ugo, owner and chef of a restaurant, “The Biscuit Soup”. The second is Philippe, a somewhat important magistrate who still lives with his childhood nanny, Nicole, who is overprotective of him to the point of trying to prevent him from having relationships with other women, and who fulfills her own sexual needs with him. The third character is Marcello, an Alitalia pilot and womaniser. The fourth and final main character is Michel, who is an effeminate television producer. The four come together by car to the beautifully furnished but unused villa owned by Philippe. There they find the old caretaker, Hector, who has innocently prepared everything for the great feast….

The first to die is Marcello, after being enraged with his own impotence; he goes to the toilet and causes the sanitary pipes to explode….He becomes exasperated, and realizing the futility of the farce, decides to leave the house at night during a snow storm, in the old Bugatti that he had repaired earlier in the day with great delight. His friends find him the next morning, frozen to death in the driving seat…

After Marcello comes Michel…Already suffering from indigestion and crammed to capacity with food (he cannot even lift his legs practising dance, his favourite pastime), he suffers an attack of bowel movements while playing the piano. Amid flatulence and worse, he is finally able to let it all go, and collapses on the terrace…

Ugo prepares an enormous dish made from three different types of liver pâté in the shape of the Dome of Les Invalides, which he serves to the remaining diners, Philippe and Andrea, in the kitchen in view of the two dead friends… Philippe and Andrea cannot bring themselves to eat it. Philippe goes off to bed, leaving Andrea to keep Ugo company during his determined effort to eat the entire pâté. Some time later, she later calls Philippe back downstairs to help her stop his friend from stuffing himself to death. They cannot dissuade Ugo, and end up attending to him on the kitchen table, the one feeding him, the other masturbating him until he orgasms and dies at the same time….

The last to die is the diabetic Philippe, on the bench under the lime-tree of Boileau and into the arms of Andrea, after eating a pudding she has made shaped like a pair of breasts.

And from Wies Sanders in 50 years La Grande Bouffe:

The film La Grande Bouffe is a cynical indictment of the unforeseen negative consequences of the Trente Glorieuses, a period without war, but also without tradition or meaning. In the film, four highly educated, rich white men eat themselves to death. They don’t do much more than that and they do it without apparent reasons or a preconceived purpose. It simply arises from a decadent boredom that naturally accelerates and can only be stopped by death. Freed from norms and traditions, the four men appear unable to cope with the resulting meaninglessness. Boundless hedonism may initially seem like heaven, but in reality turns out to be hell.

It was a high-grossing film in France and did indeed deeply offend many:

And actress Andréa Ferréol says: “For months, restaurateurs told us that they refused to serve us. One evening I was at an Italian restaurant with a friend. A few customers stood up and the man came over and said, “Since you’re here, ma’am, I’m leaving!”” It is not surprising: the film shows many taboos: waste, excess, shit, vomit, boredom, nudity and whores.

I supposed the reason for connecting my having hit disgust overload to La Grand Bouffe is of informational force-feeding, like a duck being noodled, and that it’s getting worse. I’m not alone in seeing the Administration’s offenses becoming more frequent and intense. Sections from a new must-read piece by Andrew Coyne, Donald Trump – and American democracy – is getting exponentially worse, in the Globe and Mail (hat tip Dr. Kevin):

A point I have tried to make over the last year or so is that Donald Trump can only get worse: that however corrupt or incompetent or dictatorial or treasonous or insane he may appear at any given moment, it will inevitably come to be seen as a relative golden age beside what is to come.

There is a reason for this. It is that he can only stir the media and establishment outrage on which both he and his supporters thrive if he behaves even worse than we are accustomed to him behaving. It is not enough to say or do some appalling thing, even if it would have ended the career of any previous politician. He does that, quite literally, several times a day. Rather, he must exceed expectations of his grotesquerie. His critics’ dilemma – how to sustain outrage in the face of the constant, numbing, normalizing stream of objectively outrageous conduct – is also, in a way, his….

What I had not anticipated was the second derivative. After a time, that is, people come to expect, not just bad behaviour, but steadily worsening behaviour. So to keep feeding his outrage addiction, Mr. Trump’s behaviour not only has to keep getting worse, but to do so at an ever accelerating rate. And, I suppose, the rate of acceleration must also increase, and the rate of acceleration of the rate of acceleration, and so on. We are in a kind of hyperinflation of presidential derangement, an exponential curve asymptotically approaching Nero.

Contra La Grande Bouffe, our narcissistic misleadership class members would never set out to kill themselves. But their orgiastic love of power, unbounded by any deep sense of purpose or responsibility, is producing similar outcomes for their rule, their records, and their nations. How can they, for instance, have failed to subdue Russia and not exhibit any interest in getting facts as to why their schemes have not worked? How can they still be relying on Ukraine propaganda? Hadn’t the mystery of Putin and Russia unbowed elicited some doubt and resulting sanity-checking?

Admittedly, one reason is the way that very same narcissism has produced deep embubblement, that they have surrounded themselves with toadies who won’t tell them that it’s painfully obvious that they are amateurs, way out of their depth. Consider this wince in comments from Aurelien about the then 28-point peace plan:

And I just have to say that every time I look at this list I’m astonished by how amateurish it is. It’s not simply that the US is trying to commit other nations, and international organisations, to things, but most of the points are political commitments which may be reversed at any time, and some things are simply wrong: there’s no question of Ukraine signing the NPT, it did that in 1993. And a “security guarantee” for Ukraine would be meaningless unless it were backed by military force, which is the one thing the West doesn’t have. The whole thing is so unprofessional, it hurts.

And to turn to a completely different sort of lack of reality among those who should know better, consider AI. I had mistakenly thought of it as a mere equity mania, which means it could produce a serious economic downdraft but not a financial crisis. But the fact that major players are using off-balance sheet vehicles to borrow changes the picture completely. A meltdown or Japan-style deflation/zombification are all too possible. And the US does not begin to have Japan’s level of social cohesion.

It may seem unduly finance-fixated to be concerned about the level of capital destruction, but again, the Great Depression, Japan, and the long-term consequences of the bank-sparing response to 2008 (in particular, the continued great increase in inequality) show these unwinds harm (pretty much) all of society. And if the AI touts are actually proven correct, we can look forward to the AI-induced dislocation of high unemployment among the educated.

Ed Zitron provides a good review of his extensive writings on how the AI hype, particularly its economics, don’t begin to add up.

One particularly important tidbit, that many of the chips purchased are apparently being warehoused. And GPUs are on a planned one-year development cycle, with maybe 3 years of use. They are wasting assets. At 24:25.

Newsweek: What happens if what happens when the music stops?

Zitron: Well, there are a few problems. So, first of all, there there’s this stat that came out. I think it’s reaffirmed by a professor as well where it was AI capex and spend on data centers accounted for more of GDP growth in the first half of this year than all consumer spending combined. That’s incredible because our entire economy is predicated on consumer spending which is what’s crazier though is Nvidia claimed about a month ago that they’ve shipped 6 million Blackwell GPUs. That’s the newest generation. Now I went and did the maths on this. It’s about 6 GW to 12 GW of IT load, which just means power. We haven’t built that many data centers. We haven’t even built a quarter of that. So, not only is the biggest company on the stock market only getting there because of selling GPUs, but I’m suspicious as to whether those GPUs have gone anywhere, whether those GPUs are they’re not in data centers. The data centers don’t exist. The power doesn’t exist, but the physical data centers don’t either. So 6 million of these bloody things holding up our markets, they’re sitting in warehouses.

And at 48:05:

Zitron: But a really simple thing is when there’s enough money and a good justification of something, you don’t have to like get the runes and the spells out. You don’t have to get a shaman. You don’t need a wizard to conjure the money up and create some obtuse debt vehicle. If it if this was the future, why isn’t it on your balance sheet, mate? And the answer is Meta makes no money from AI. Zip. They all it does is…

Newsweek: They make money from ads just like they have been for whatever 10 years.

Zitron: They’re claiming, oh, we’ve seen 5% increase from generative AI ads. Bull, I’m sorry. Show me actual numeric like money. Money. Show me the money. And they never will. They never will. They changed how they met Meta changed I think late last year from how they measure active users. It’s like daily active people now. They moved the around.

Newsweek: It’s like how Netflix does it with like the watching hours or they all move. It’s all fake.

Zitron: It is. And but on top of this, it’s all fake but used to buy because all these companies Microsoft, Meta, Google, they used to be awesome because awesome financially, I guess, because their cash flow was just there and they didn’t sink hundreds of billions of dollars into GPU. They weren’t asset heavy. Now they’re asset heavy businesses. Software is meant to proliferate endlessly…And now they’re just attached to a bunch of GPUs. They Microsoft owns hundreds of thousands of old generation GPUs. There’s a thing called an impairment. When something loses its value, you have to mark it down. One of those is coming for all of them cuz they all own A100 GPUs, H100 GPUs, the ones that came out in 2020 and 2021. >> And those are just basically paper weights now. >> Well, they still work. They still work, but not for like not for long. And also, if they still work way behind the new ones, it there’s it’s not really clear why anyone’s doing anything.

A confirming tidbit:

As you know, the foregoing is only a tiny subset of the official sadism and stupidity. ICE raids. Crypto grifting. Indifference to the baked-in health train wreck in 2026 due to premium increases. Tariff-induced cost increases wrecking small businesses. Trump’s ongoing petty vengefulness.

So I understand why some of you feel the need to take news breaks. But remember, if we don’t keep watching and make what noise we can, things get worse at an even faster rate. Trump for all his bunkering still apparently cares about polls, so noticing and amplifying evidence of his Administration’s incompetence and corruption does have an impact.

So resort to your preferred remedy, be it a stiff drink, exercise, meditation, or binge watching cat videos, and steel your nerves.

________

1 Amusingly, the documents lists Cambodia and Thailand as the first of the spots where Trump asserts that he “negotiated peace”. From the Bangkok Post PM promises ‘necessary military response’ to Cambodian attacks, followed by the breaking story in the Nikkei: Thai military launches airstrikes on Cambodia as cross-border clashes erupt

2 Only three succeeded; one froze to death.

3 It did not make it to the art house theater in Yellow Springs, where I regularly went with my debate team buddies in high school.

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